The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Dragon Age 2

Bioshock Infinite

Metroid

Mass Effect Series

Devil May Cry

Pokemon

Assassin’s Creed

People sometimes are inspired by video games so much they get tattoos of them. Like these, without focusing on a certain franchise. If you want to be more specific, check out people who can’t get enough of Tetris, or these fans of Nintendo.

Rovlo is attempting to bring the passion for flinging birds back to life with Angry Birds 2, the sequel of the smash hit mobile game. We don’t have many details yet, but we can confirm that this sequel will come out the 30th of July, and will be introduced in a San Francisco event with more details about the gameplay and features.

“With 3 billion game downloads, millions of fans across the globe, multiple mashups and spin-offs, collaborations with A-list celebrities and much more, we’re really proud that Angry Birds is the mother of all mobile game apps. And now we’re proud to announce the mother of all sequels – Angry Birds 2!“, said Rovlo on their official website and blog.

For this fans, this represents a new reason to get excited, but for the gamer universe, this looks like more of the same. The last few entries in the series straight up looked like excuses despite the overall good quality – and despite all of this, Angry Birds remains a leader and one of the industry’s biggest names when it comes to mobile games.

The first Angry Birds title was released on December 2011, and ever since then they have been producing a huge ammount of spin-offs, some even with completely revamped and different gameplay that has nothing to do with flinging birds at all. Some of these titles include Angry Birds: Star Wars, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, Angry Birds Friends, Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds Transformers, Angry Birds Stella and even Bad Piggies, where the green pigs are the stars and main characters. And yet, it’s only now that we’re getting a numbered sequel. We will have to wait until the 30th of July, but so far it seems we will be getting new characters, more complex levels and renewed tools. Will they be able to recapture the magic?

On december, last year, the PlayStation brand turned 20, so they released a limited edition PS4 with the classic colors from the PS1. To keep the celebration going, Sony announced the relaunch of the DualShock 4 grey controllers in the same gamma, which will be sold separately without the bundle.

The 20th anniversary DualShock 4 shown in Las Vegas last year is going to be relaunched on september for European countries, and in late september/early october for American territories. There are no certainties if other regions will also get their own limited edition DualShock 4, but Sony is doing their part to keep the 20th anniversary celebration going.

Besides the new color gamma tributing the original PlayStation, this new edition of the DualShock 4 isn’t any different from the regular, original controllers which came in black, red, yellow and blue. What’s more, with the touch pad taking a huge portion of the controller’s front, there is not a lot of room left to feature the PS symbols like the ones that came with the original 20th anniversary PS4 did, but will feature the “dots” seen in every other DualShock 4 model instead. And yet, despite all of this, it gets our nostalgia glands going, and the grey finishing looks just beautiful. Sony, can we get commercially released bundles all in grey? We’d probably buy a PS4 all over again.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has passed away at 55 of a bile duct growth. He leaves behind an eternal legacy of gaming and business done right.

Satoru Iwata, one of Nintendo’s recognizable faces along with the American branch president Reggie Fils-Aimé, has passed away the last 11 of July after a hard battle with a type of bile duct cancer. Nintendo broke the news through their web page which read “Nintendo Co., Ltd. deeply regrets to announce that President Satoru Iwata passed away on July 11, 2015 due to a bile duct growth“.

Iwata had already been through a series of procedures when this cancer was first discovered, and even skipped a few high-profile events such as E3 to take care of his health. With Iwata gone, we’ve lost one of the pioneers of the first, early Nintendo. He had been in the company since the 80’s and helped create classics such as Balloon Fight or the beloved Earthbound, the second entry in the Mother series. In early 2000 he became the company director, and in 2002 he was named the fourth president in the Japanese giant’s history, taking over former president Hiroshi Yamauchi.

Iwata had a central role along the lives of several consoles such as the Gamecube, Nintendo DS, Wii, Nintendo 3DS and Wii U – some of those broke all records and became a part of history, some others failed to impress gamers and investors. Regardless of victories and failures, Iwata leaves behind him a trail of pure innovation and the magic of one of the industry’s giants – maybe the only man with a legacy quite as important would be Shigeru Miyamoto himself, the creator of Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda.

Entertainment is one of the main reasons tablets were created, in the first place, and there are such portable gaming devices out there for wallets of all sizes. UNU M7006 is on the budget side of things, but it still packs plenty of power for most Android games.

Considering the simplistic design and the modest technical specifications, UNU M7006 is more adequate for kids, or for people who are just making their way into the world of Android gaming. That being said, it’s by no means ugly or slow, but it does have a design that might appeal more to the aforementioned categories.

The M7006 is powered by a RK3188 chipset that includes a quad-core CPU running at up to 1.6Ghz (according to Rockchip, the manufacturer of the SoC), and a Mali-400 GPU clocked at up to 600Mhz. The GPU may not sound like much, but if you come to think about it, it might just be enough for the 7″ 5-point IPS touchscreen display with a 1280×800 resolution.

In terms of memory, this gaming tablet only packs 1GB of RAM and 8GB of ROM, which can be furthermore expanded by using a microSD card. Surprisingly enough, the device even has two cameras, a 5MP one in the back and a 2MP snapper in the front, for video calls and selfies. The 3000mAh battery should keep the device running for up to 3h, considering that you’re playing videos, and not games. That’s definitely disappointing, but if you intend to give this to kids, you probably shouldn’t let them play games for that long each day.

UNU recommends connecting the M7006 tablet to a TV or monitor, using an HDMI cable, as seen in the above picture. A wireless gaming controller is used for playing the games, and if users want to do something else besides gaming, they can use an air mouse/wireless keyboard combo.

Currently sold for $87.99 by GearBest, the UNU M7006 Android gaming tablet might seem to have a bit of a steep price, considering its modest specifications. However, to sweeten the deal, the manufacturer has included the gaming controller and air mouse-keyboard combo pictured above, so that you have all the tools needed for entertainment. These accessories definitely make the whole deal worth it.

Fans and critics agree that Nintendo didn’t have the greatest E3 event this year, but at least a beautiful piece of art shown in it filled us with nostalgia. Master creator Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Donkey Kong, Zelda and Super Mario Bros explained during a presentation on the new Super Mario maker how the plumber’s levels were created way back when, in graph paper.

30 years ago, creating a Super Mario Bros level was not the same process as it is now, and game creators had to get creative. The upcoming Wii U title Mario Maker is, partly, an homage to those early days of the plumber – but the point was truly driven home when they showed these extremely detailed designs that are an extremely valuable relic from the olden days by now.

Miyamoto explained that back in the day, in order to create the Mario levels they used graph paper, which were then shown to the programmers and designers. If there were any errors, they had to go back to these graphs, and mark the modifications they were supposed to make.

“changes had to be minimal because of the design and code limitations. Once a level had been built, it wasn’t that easy to modify it. The “magic” and personality of each of the mythical Super Mario levels has a really simple beginning”, explained Miyamoto.

Miyamoto also mentioned that part of the design just came from drawing levels that he’d just like to play himself, by just letting himself go on pure impulse and creativity. The big exception was the first level of the game, which was thought of as a tutorial for the rest of the game, where they spent several hours thinking and designing each of the elements. The idea was to throw the play into a playground where they would intuitively figure out the game mechanics based on what they saw. The goombas and mushroom placement on the levels were very deliberate, for example: the mushroom is hard to avoid and the goombas, designed so the player would instantly figure out he had to either eliminate them or get out of their way.

Mario Maker is a simplification of those years. With tools that ease the creation of levels via both software and hardware (the Wii U control is perfect for this), the idea is to turn the player into Shigeru Miyamoto and unleash their creativity.

After failing to buy Twitch, the search giant figured that the best option it has left is to create a similar streaming service. YouTube Gaming will be coming later this summer to help gamers show off in front of others.

The announcement comes just before E3 2015 (which will take place in LA between June 16-18), and since this is one of the most important tradeshow in the industry, we can expect Google to demonstrate YouTube Gaming then. Much like the Amazon-owned Twitch.TV, YouTube Gaming will enable users to subscribe to games in order to find out the latest news about upcoming releases or updates. Of course, the main goal is to follow livestreams of other gamers playing the game.

YouTube creators who specialize in vlogging about games will now have a place to call home, thanks to Google’s new website and app. Streaming will be made at 60fps in HTML5, which makes me believe that the gaming.youtube.com website will only be accessible in Chrome.

The dashboard will provide content creators with live analytic data that should help them improve their future videos. Targeting should also be facilitated by the provided stats. Additional details about how YouTube Gaming is going to work are included in a blog post published by Google today.

As mentioned before, YouTube Gaming will also be available as an app, mostly for Android, but I believe that one for Chrome OS is also in the works.

Google intends to launch YouTube Gaming later this summer, first in the US and UK. I’m sure that if feedback is positive, the search giant will expand this video streaming service to other countries. To be frank, I’m a bit shocked that South Korea isn’t among the first countries to get a taste of YouTube Gaming, considering the e-sports status of gaming in that country.

Until the video streaming service gets launched, users can follow the YouTube Gaming Twitter account, to find out the latest news about Twitch’s latest competitor.

One cannot help but wonder what other niches is Google going to target with its future YouTube sites and apps. After YouTube Kids and YouTube Gaming, I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar video streaming services for car enthusiasts, especially combined with some AR.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see how Twitch.TV will react when confronted with the behemoth that is Google’s YouTube.

Rumors claiming Nintendo’s next console would run on Google’s OS Android seem to be unfounded. In a surprisingly quick PR maneuver, the big N have clarified that Android on Nintendo consoles is just “not going to happen”.

Nintendo are currently working on a new console of which we know nothing except its code-name, NX. As there are very few certainties about this new hardware piece (it’s a new console but “it won’t replace the Wii U nor the 3DS”), speculation is rampant, and several users had been talking about the possibility of this system running under a variation of Android OS. These rumors were so strong that Nintendo themselves, who rarely concern themselves with hearsay, came out and clarified: “There is no truth to the report saying that we are planning to adopt Android for NX,” a Nintendo spokesman said. It’s just not going to happen.

This answer comes as the response to the rumors started by Nikkei, a Japanese newspaper citing inside knowledge and claiming that the big N could be using Android on their next console. The idea was simple: by using Android, Nintendo would have access from the get-go to a huge selection of titles that are already on Google’s platform, and they would only need to add their original productions on top. Also, seeing Android’s progress on areas such as TV and wearables, it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. Furthermore, if Nintendo were to keep their Wii U style controller with a touch screen, there is no reason for any Android app to be incompatible. The counterpart of all this, though, would be the possibility of hacks and piracy.

With this rumor done with, we’re back to where we started: we have no idea what the NX is, but we can’t wait to see it and know more. Nintendo has had a rough couple of years now, with low sales on their home console department. The Wii U has been struggling to recapture a fragment of its predecessor’s success (the Wii). And even though the 3DS is doing fine and selling well, the Japanese company is already researching alternative distribution and monetization channels, such as creating amusement parks, amiibos, or even releasing smartphone games. Some users are even speculating that the NX itself might be a wearable, sort of like the pokewalker that came with Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver.

Valve’s OS and hardware have yet to go mainstream, but that doesn’t make the company’s digital distribution platform any less great. What good to buy countless games, though, if it’s impossible to get your money back after discovering that some of them are unsatisfactory?

The Bellevue, Washington corporation is looking for new ways to make its customers happy. After all, if a gamer asks for a refund when a game or DLC is not to his liking, there are great chances that the money will eventually be spent on another game, so there’s no loss for Valve there. To make sure that people won’t abuse the new Steam refund policy, Valve has put some rules into place, and has even launched a dedicated page for Steam Refunds.

First of all, gamers who want to get a refund must not play the game for more than two hours. I’d say that two hours are more than enough to figure out whether you like a game or not, but I’d advise you to play the game right after purchasing it or as soon as possible after that. The reason why I’m suggesting this is that you can qualify for a refund if you apply for it within a fortnight after purchasing the game. Again, that’s a very reasonable timeframe.

So how does this work for DLCs, if you’ve played the base game for more than two hours (or have even finished it, for that matter)? The rule is simple, in this case, too. After applying the DLC, you shouldn’t play the game for more than two hours, if you want a refund.

Steam’s new refund policy goes way beyond games and DLCs. In-game purchases also qualify for refunds, assuming that you’re asking for them within 48 hours of purchase. Needless to say, the purchased item should not be altered in any way.

Enabling gamers to get refunds for the games they don’t like is great news for several reasons. First of all, the money isn’t gone forever, and you don’t have to feel sorry for spending your hard-earned cash on something you don’t like. Secondly, this should encourage game publishers to optimize their games before launching them, so that gamers don’t end up frustrated while playing bug-ridden titles. People think that this measure should have been taken a long time ago, but I guess it’s better later than never.

Just when it seemed that barebone PCs are out of fashion, Corsair announced Bulldog, a water-cooled barebone computer intended for gamers.

It’s not unusual for gamers to build their own computers from scratch, as they are well-aware of what piece of hardware goes where. However, barebones represent a great way of skipping a few steps in the whole “Build a PC” process, especially if the cases they come in are attractive. Corsair has plenty of experience in creating not only good looking, but also highly functional PC cases, so it figured that launching a barebone PC would be the next logical step. Enter Bulldog, a reasonably priced barebone that comes in a compact body, proving that gaming machines don’t need to look like a monolith.

Since it’s scheduled for a Q4 2015 launch, Bulldog will most probably include a motherboard based on Intel’s upcoming Skylake chipset. In other words, support for up to 32GB of DDR3 and DDR4 RAM is provided, along with USB 3.1, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 audio and built-in Wi-Fi. AMD fans won’t be neglected either, but the motherboards and chipsets to be used are currently unknown.

As seen below, Bulldog will feature a Hydro Series liquid CPU cooler, which means that users won’t have to mess around with tubing, pumps and all of that. This cooling solution not only keeps the CPU’s temperature down, but it’s also quieter than air coolers. Should you want to also water-cool your GPU, Corsair will provide a DIY cooling kit for $99.

A fully modular 600W SFX power supply is also included, to make sure that gamers use just the right amount of cables, without any unnecessary air-blocking clutter.

Also coming with Bulldog is Lapdog, a lap desk that enables you to play games from the comfort of your couch. This accessory even has a built-in USB hub for charging phones and powering USB headphones or mice.

Both Bulldog and Lapdog will be launched in Q4 2015, for $399 and $89, respectively. You would still have to spend some extra for the CPU and RAM, but considering that what you are left with is a great degree of freedom, I’d say that it’s worth it. I’m not a big fan of the Lapdog, but the Bulldog gaming barebone PC would definitely make a great addition to any gamer’s living room.